Goody Bag Geodes
I brought back to the US some tile I bought in Lisbon wrapped in a plastic bag. The souvenir is all and well, but the bag was so actually representative of the grit I felt there. I thought about it as a relic of that time, a very specific place and time - and the utilitarianism of it.
I encased the bag in resin using gift bags as a mould, encasing it with its form. I thought about greek amphora and pouring vessels, painted imagery showing the use of the object on which it was inscribed. What if the bag were dug up in the future, inspected to try to understand the humans that once lived there?
Goody Bag Geodes are common grocery and takeout bags cast in resin. Created by casting in plastic bags to create surface texture reminiscent of a gift bag. The process repeats, building layers around the bag to mimic a geological formation.
We are in a society of maximum creation, in an inexhaustible system capable of infinite output. We are creating artifacts of a society addicted to the illusion of endless growth and consumption. We make and cast aside and buy and throw away, regurgitating fallacies of value in objects who’s function is laughably frivolous in its construction and in its ability to ‘die,’ or return to let’s say, to the natural. Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice, leaving our mark as a compression of useless suffocating totes.
Installation during MARN Mentorship Program Exhibition at Between Two Galleries, Milwaukee, WI. August 2020.